Messina On Creating Trek Comics

A veteran of several Star Trek comics, artist David Messina explains the process of how to create a Trek comic.

As reported by Trekzone Network, Messina begins with lots of drawings, to better understand what he needs to do to draw a specific character. “My process is particular because my first concern is to handle the character’s likeness without becoming addicted to the pictures,” he explained. “Because Star Trek is such a huge universe, each book has a different main character. I usually start with a lot of sketches to bring something to the character, understand how it must be drawn. Then I start with the rough pencil of all the pages. I always think that a good comic book should be ready without balloons, without the caption.”“So I work on the circling,” Messina continued. “Then I start to finish the circling with the pencil. Then I start with the inks. After that I send the inks to my colleagues…for digital coloring. We spend a lot of time talking about the project, how the color should be and sometimes I add already some background.”

Does Messina have a favorite Star Trek character? “…My absolute favorite of all is Spock,” he said. ” It’s my favorite character because Spock is from my childhood.”

But other characters appeal to Messina too. “I really like Sisko from Deep Space Nine,” he said. “I drew Sisko in a small panel in the second issue of Klingons. But IDW doesn’t have the rights to publish Deep Space Nine. I would have liked to draw a story about Sisko. Seven of Nine surely is the most lovable and really, really gorgeous. And then my favorite character was Picard. I really enjoyed drawing Intelligence Gathering especially because I could draw Picard.”

After working on Star Trek: Countdown, Messina adds Nero to his list of favorite Star Trek characters. “I really like the character of Nero because it’s a dark character with strong motivation,” explained Messina. “It’s really a special character. Violent, but I can understand the reason of all the violence. So maybe Nero along Spock is my favorite character of all Star Trek.”